


Pretending to Sleep

by thebookofnights



Series: Partially Stars [1]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: First Day in Night Vale, M/M, POV Carlos (Welcome to Night Vale), Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-09-17
Packaged: 2017-12-26 20:54:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/970183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebookofnights/pseuds/thebookofnights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the dreams — the dreams, the dreams, and the soft, deep, commanding Voice still lingering in his ears, even after he’s been awake for hours — the arrival in Night Vale is almost an anticlimax.</p><p>Almost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pretending to Sleep

Ever since the Sand Wastes engulfed the highway like a predator, Carlos has been unable to shake the persistent conviction that he’s being watched. But nothing has happened so far to justify such paranoia, and so he says nothing and keeps his hands at ten and two, Route 800 like the gullet of some endless desert snake unwinding in the rearview mirror of the old white Chevy. Watches as the little town accretes around them: trailers, a gas station, rows of residential streets, a local supermarket, a radio tower blinking one lazy eye of red light at its spire, and finally, after the turnoff onto Third Street, the blocky white building next to their rented laboratory space, advertising as a pizzeria.

The neon sign in the window is the first thing that strikes him as obviously strange.

It catches the corner of his eye as he’s straightening up from the driver’s seat, nursing his cup of coffee, and he pushes his glasses up on his nose to focus more closely on it. Bright orange and slightly off-center, it reads:

BIG RICOS PIZZA  
FIRST SLICE FREE  
ALL OTHERS MANDATED

The upright of the letter _P_ flickers and buzzes. It’s broad morning daylight, and the clock on the car’s dashboard says 8:22, but maybe they leave the sign on all the time.

At Carlos’s side, Eli Hirsch, the pugnacious, curly-haired intern, makes a face. “There’s supposed to be an apostrophe in that,” he says, as if personally insulted. “At least, I assume there is, if the owner’s name is actually Big Rico. Sounds like he’s in the Mafia or something.”

Carlos reaches out with his free hand to steady the armload of boxed tools the younger man is balancing, unable to help a smile. “We haven’t been in town five minutes, and you’re already hatching a conspiracy theory?”

“I said it _sounds_ like he’s in the Mafia. I didn’t say I had a firm hypothesis.” Eli shifts his weight, more firmly grasping the edges of the bottommost cardboard box. “That’s a weird slogan, though. What does that even mean, ‘all others mandated’? Can you get arrested here for not eating pizza?”

Carlos shades his eyes with one hand, but he can’t see through the sandblown panes of the nearest window; only shadows moving behind it. For some reason, the sight gives him an inner chill. He shrugs. Tries to sound cheerful. “You can always ask them. I’ll send you out for food later on.”

Eli sets off for the door of their new lab with a grunt. “Fine with me. As long as you don’t mind garlic. Hey,” pausing on the doorstep, “where are we supposed to find keys? Seems like they’re charging us an awfully low rent, even for a location like this. Marianne said something about it the other day. Like, she asked you, but then you were all cryptic about it again.”

Carlos rummages in his pocket with his free hand. Cell phone, gas station receipt, charging cord... he pulls out a half-crushed cigarette pack, grimaces, drops it back. “I don’t recall the conversation; I’m sorry.”

“Why _won’t_ you tell us what all this secrecy is about?” Eli turns from contemplation of the locked door to fix a narrowed gaze on his superior. “It’s not like you.”

Carlos shakes his head, finally locating the keys. “You’ve read my proposals, Eli. You know the science is sound.”

“The science is non-fucking-existent, that’s what it is. Bare bones. Nobody’s ever done enough research to know for sure, especially not after that incident with —” Cut short by the sudden tinny frenzy of his phone’s ringtone, Eli shuts up long enough to answer the call. “Yeah? No, we just got here now. I can have the table up in a minute, no problem, we just have to decide where to put it...”

The key turns with a _chunk_ and the door pushes sluggishly open. It’s definitely cooler inside, Carlos observes with relief.

The converted warehouse smells dusty, but otherwise clean. He stops in the middle of the dark, echoing space and turns, cataloguing what he sees. More than sufficient room. Several corners that have already been subdivided, one of which looks like it’ll work for hazmat containment. Small high windows, in desperate need of cleaning. They’ll have to rely entirely on the overhead lights, even during daytime. Two large metal sinks. A dilapidated sofa, under a clear plastic cover, that someone has left by the east wall. A good place by the front door to begin setting up Eli’s effective, if cobbled-together, security system — he stops, about to ask Eli where to find the instructions, but the intern’s still chattering.

“Well, where are you, then? ...What, all three of you in the truck? Who’s sitting on whose lap? Wait a second — holy shit. Uh, boss?” Eli’s voice goes up half an octave with what might be fear, as his eyes flick to something over Carlos’s shoulder. “There’s someone, uh, someone —”

Another voice responds. An urbane female voice, as cheery as a travel commercial and as chilling as a night wind. “Someone to see you, Mr. — now, I forget. What did you say your name was?”

Carlos turns around again. A woman has appeared, out of nowhere, at the far end of the room, by the fire door.

She could have stepped out from behind one of the partitions, or through the door that he assumes leads to a bathroom, but as a dramatic entrance, it’s unparalleled. She’s movie-star gorgeous, olive-skinned, exquisitely coiffed, wearing a dark blue power suit with padded, squared shoulders and an iron pendant of some kind that glints in the half-light. Carlos has trouble focusing on it, as if it repels his gaze, and that’s oddly frightening. But the woman’s smile is much more frightening. It doesn’t touch her eyes at all.

He summons a smile of his own to match. _Damned if I’m going to be scared off now_ , he thinks, and wonders if the thought is visible in his face.

“I didn’t,” he says. “I’m with the new tenants. We’re renting this building for lab space.”

“Ah, yes.” The woman glides forward, trailing a hand along the edge of one of the sinks. “But what kind of lab? Thought experiments? Animal testing? Reeducation?”

 _Reeducation?_  Carlos’s jaw tightens. “No, we’re only studying —”

“You have a permit from the City Council, of course?” The question is suddenly whiplashed out, interrupting him. He finds himself responding almost soothingly, as if to a university official asking about his security pass.

“Yes, of course. It’s in process, but I was told to go ahead. My intern here’s taking care of the paperwork.”

“Oh, I’m sure your sacrifices are all in order,” says the woman. “You wouldn’t want to leave _that_ until the last minute.” She laughs, as if genuinely amused. “But where are my manners? I’m Pamela Winchell, you know… Mayor of Night Vale. I like to welcome newcomers personally.”

Eli’s eyes, now almost starting out of his head, roll from her to Carlos. He’s still got the phone to his ear, but it seems to have gone dead.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Carlos lies for both of them. He puts the keys back in his pocket and offers his hand. Pamela Winchell gives it a hollow stare, as if wondering how it would taste, and then visibly starts and shakes with him, her upbeat manner flickering back.

“I know it’s a bore, but I need you to do something for me,” she says. “A favor. Call a town meeting, won’t you? So everyone can come and get to know you.”

Carlos glances at Eli again. The intern seems to be desperately trying not to laugh. Or scream. It’s hard to tell exactly which. He temporizes. “We just... we just got here. Is a town meeting really necessary?”

“Yes, quite.” She gives a sharp little _there’s an end to the matter_ nod. “I’ll have it announced for you right away. Just be at the Town Hall at noon, all right? I’ve got… well… other things to do today, but I’m sure you’ll give a charming speech.”

“A speech? But I haven’t prepared a —”

“That’s all right, you’ll do _fine_ , Carlos,” says Pamela Winchell. “Just give us an idea of, well, what you’re here for. It’ll be fun!” A bright smile. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to be off. Oh, and do remember to keep those trash cans out front well covered. We’ve had quite an infestation lately,” she adds, with an airy little wave, and pushes open the fire door, stepping out with as much aplomb as if she were on her way to meet a corporate helicopter. The fire alarm does not go off.

Eli stares after her, mouth open. It takes him a moment to regain control of his voice. “Oh my God, she’s totally batshit,” he says. “How’d she even get in here?”

Frowning, Carlos doesn’t immediately reply. He sets his coffee cup down on the floor and strides to the doorway the woman has just disappeared through.

“What did she mean, an infestation?” Eli demands. “An infestation of _what?_  Raccoons? Feral dogs? Aliens? Are we on some kind of reality TV show?”

“I doubt it.” Carlos sweeps the backyard with a single hard glance, and his stomach sinks: it’s tiny, fenced in, an assortment of flat rocks and ankle-high scrub bushes. Pamela Winchell — who might be Mayor of Night Vale, a madcap prankster, or an escaped patient from a mental facility — is either superlatively good at climbing chainlink fences in high heels, or she’s vanished into thin air.

From behind him, the familiar careful series of miniature clatterings as Eli sets down the stack of boxes, and in another moment the intern is staring out over Carlos’s arm, likewise silenced.

“Whoa,” he breathes. “What was she, a ghost or an acrobat?”

“I don’t know.”

“And what kind of idiot fences in the area just outside a fire door?”

“Our landlord, apparently.”

“What do you want me to do, boss?” Eli’s eyes are troubled.

“Find out why the fire alarm didn’t go off,” Carlos says dryly.

“Yeah, but — this first?” The intern’s holding up the handmade scanner they put together two weeks before, the one they don’t have a name for yet.

“All right,” and Carlos raises his arm.

Eli ducks under it and walks cautiously into the middle of the yard, holding the scanner out in front of him. After a moment, he shakes his head. “Nothing conclusive. Damn. This is gonna be harder than I thought, the whole town’s probably saturated with overlapping fields of bizarrity.” He kicks a rock moodily, turns back. “Think your EMF reader’s worth a try?”

“No. Not if the scanner doesn’t show anything.”

“Right, well, I won’t say anything to the others yet,” Eli says.

“And I’ll start on the security system, if I can decipher your handwriting. Set the motion detectors, once the others arrive.”

“Right.” Rather grimly. “You’re going to the Town Hall, then?”

“Yes.”

“And we’re going with you?”

“No. I want you all to stay here and finish setting up while I’m gone. It’ll be fine. Besides, the sooner we can get an idea of what’s going on, the better.”

“Great. Hauling heavy equipment around. My favorite.” Eli’s assumed sulkiness is spoiled by the quick, fugitive look of relief in his face as he starts to unload the first box, pulling out a screwdriver. Carlos waits for him to ask the obvious question: _How did she know your name?_

But he doesn’t. After a moment, instead, “Where are you going to sleep tonight?”

“Here.”

“There isn’t even a bed here. What are you going to do, get drunk and pour yourself into the biggest beaker you can find?”

Carlos laughs at this. “No, no, I’ll just sleep on that sofa. I can always leave the plastic on, if it’s that bad. I might be up late tonight —”

— _dreaming_ —

“— working on my notes, and I’d rather not bother with a hotel.”

Eli opens his mouth as if to protest, but the honk of a horn from outside snags his attention instead. Dave Halland’s voice floats in to them: “So this is the famous Night Vale! Hello, Night Vale! Hello, new lab! Hey, Eli! Get your lazy butt out here!” and the intern crosses his eyes expressively, makes a flapping mouth with one hand, and runs back out the front door, propping it open as he goes.

Carlos follows, but more slowly.

He still feels like he’s being watched.

 

With the rental van mostly unloaded, the cavernous darkness banished by the artifice of industrial lighting, and the exhaustive process of setting up and testing their equipment begun, Carlos’s fellow scientists seem resigned to his intention of leaving them for the Town Hall, despite their conviction that it will turn out to be a practical joke of some kind.

“What,” Marianne Smithson wonders aloud, stealing a sip from Carlos’s cup of long-cold coffee, which has been moved from the floor to the end of the center table, “does our landlord have a blog or something? ‘My new tenants are arriving tomorrow, and there’s a handsome Latino guy in charge of all the money.’ I bet this Pamela person wants to suck you into joining a Masonic lodge or a speed dating service or something.”

“Then why didn’t she just say so?” Eli’s grumpiness has become entirely unfeigned since their colleagues uncovered the story of their strange visitor. At Carlos’s request, he has just inserted new batteries in the wall clock, and is now turning it to the right time: 10:49.

“No idea, but I don’t buy that the Mayor of Night Vale somehow broke into our lab. Or that she vanished from the backyard. I’m surprised you aren’t out there with an EMF reader, if she really scared you that badly.”

“I’m not scared,” Eli growls. “The boss told me not to bother. Besides, electromagnetic fields —”

“— don’t necessarily indicate the presence of blah, blah, blah, I know. But I’d have at least looked for footprints or something.”

“Mare, don’t get involved with this,” Phil Kirk interrupts from the corner, where he’s rechecking the mass spectrometer. “You’ll get him started on all that UFO shit again.”

Marianne grins, shaking her red braid back over one shoulder. “No, no, mysterious lights in the sky was last month. It’s vague, yet menacing, government agencies this month. Get with the program, man.”

“You won’t be scoffing once my thesis is finished,” Eli says.

“Really? Which one?”

“Oh, leave the kid alone.” Dave claps the intern on the shoulder on his way past with an empty test tube rack. “We’ve all gone through that phase.”

Phil snorts. “In grade school, maybe.”

“Yeah, but even bossman over here’s never grown entirely out of it. Aren’t the reasons we’re even here a little bit outrageous?”

“We’re here to _disprove_ the paranormal theories, not try to confirm them,” Phil argues.

Carlos lifts his eyes from the invoice for the truck rental, which, along with _gas mileage in, gas mileage out,_ and _hourly rate,_ includes a fourth box labeled _accidental damage and/or transmogrification_. Mildly, “Did any of you notice where the Town Hall is, on your way in?”

Dave shakes his head. “Why don’t you search it on Google Maps?”

“I tried, but then this happened,” and Carlos shows them the screen of his phone, frozen on a slightly blurred image. Night, a crumbling tombstone, a man’s suited leg visible at a strangely canted angle in the background.

“That’s creepy,” Marianne says, speaking for the group.

Phil interposes hastily, “Look, you’ve got no bars. Cell tower’s probably down.”

“Probably,” says Carlos. “I’ll just ask for directions.”

 

The time display on his phone, once he’s managed to close down the petrified web browser, is at 11:04. He walks. The sun is beating down on the pavement as if it has committed some unspeakable offense against the universe at large, and he finds that he needs to keep his head bowed slightly to avoid sunspots at the edges of his vision. He passes through a business district stirred to sluggish life by the lunch hour, cars driving past, subdued voices and laughter on street corners, and someone somewhere strumming a guitar, a fast-paced, but oddly mournful, tune.

At a bus shelter, he discovers a printed tourist’s map of Night Vale, which shows the Town Hall not too far away. Its highlights are labeled _walking trails, forbidden walking trails,_ and, inexplicably, _Waterfront Harbor and Recreation Area,_ which, if Carlos’s mental geography is correct, would overlook an empty expanse of sand. He decides to push testing samples of the town’s drinking water to a rather higher priority on his to-do list.

Grateful for the sliver of shade it provides, he elects to follow the right-hand side of Somerset Road, where a high, new-looking black wall hems in a tall stand of hardy desert trees. There appears to be only one entrance: a tall metal-barred gate. Walking through a fringe of leafshadow, Carlos pauses, assailed not only by a sudden strong compulsion to get closer to the bars, but an equally strong compulsion to put his head farther down and just run past, like a child on his way to school avoiding the local bully’s front yard. Annoyed with himself, he crushes both. Reaches out a cautious hand, only to snatch it back immediately, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up and the smell of ozone in his nostrils. The fence is electrified.

What the hell is it? Someone’s extremely tiny private estate? A prison for criminally inclined park benches?

He looks around for a plaque, or a street number painted on the curb, and spots a large black sign actually driven into the sidewalk with a heavy metal spike, leaving an irregular spreading star of cracks. On it is stenciled the outline of a dog — a bulldog or a mastiff, maybe, with drooping jowls and unreasonably long fangs — wearing a collar and a leash that loops upward and out of the picture. Superimposed over it in accusative red, a circle with a neat slash through it. Below it, printed in crisp white letters:

NO DOGS ALLOWED IN THE DOG PARK.  
NO PEOPLE ALLOWED IN THE DOG PARK.  
DO **NOT** APPROACH THE DOG PARK.  
HAVE A NICE DAY.  
— NIGHT VALE CITY COUNCIL —

He’s staring, baffled, at this ominous suburban totem when his phone rings suddenly and he jumps. “Shit,” under his breath. He fishes out the phone, mechanically starting to walk again. There are still no service bars, but it rings again, call display blank. Must be Eli — as always, fanatical about keeping his phone number private. He puts the phone to his ear, giving the anti-dog sign a wide berth.

“Hello? Having trouble with setup already? Or are you testing the phone coverage in the lab?”

No reply.

“Eli? Is this you? Hello?”

Nothing. Faint, very faint, static in the background of the nothing.

Carlos keeps walking. “Well, it’s your minutes you’re wasting, whoever you are,” he says. “Last chance.”

The musician in the distance has finished weaving the strands of his acoustic melody, and is tapping out the final beats with his fingers; Carlos hears the rhythm clearly in the flat, windless day, but the still, heavy silence on the other end of the phone seems to block out everything else.

“All right,” with forced calmness, “I have better things to do,” and he taps the _end_ button, momentarily wishing for an old-fashioned receiver to slam down. Keeps the phone in his hand.

11:31. 

 

The Night Vale Town Hall, to Carlos’s surprise, is exactly where the map showed it to be: a weathered building with Gothic pillars and some kind of crumbling sculpted frieze that would fascinate Marianne, with her hobby of cataloguing architecture. Carlos makes a mental note to ask her later if the only recognizable human figure, which appears to have three heads, rings any bells.

The inside of the building, by contrast, is thoroughly modern and rather soulless, except for one odd feature in the antechamber which Carlos takes to be an art installation: irregularly rounded blocks of a deep red material, arranged in a rough circle just big enough for several people to stand in the center.

He pauses on his way to the half-open door of the auditorium, stoops close to one of these miniature Stonehenge pillars, brushing sweat-damp curls of hair out of his face, unsuccessfully trying to identify what it’s made of without actually touching it. Marble? Quartz? Molded plastic? He looks around, half-expecting to see another cryptic sign, perhaps driven into the carpet in front of the unmanned reception desk, but there are no signs at all. He’s about to straighten up again when a voice speaks from behind him: “Would you like a muffin, dear?”

Startled, Carlos whips around, nearly losing his balance, to confront a cheerfully smiling elderly lady in a tunic and a strand of pearls, who reminds him strongly of his maternal grandmother. The resemblance is saved from being downright eerie only by her pale skin, slightly reddened by a sunburn across the snub of her nose, shiny with some kind of medicinal oil.

“Uh... sorry,” is all he’s able to manage, pushing his glasses back up on his nose and rasping a finger along his jaw, wishing that he’d bothered to shave before setting out. “I didn’t realize you were there.”

She smiles indulgently, holding out an enormous plate to him. “You were admiring the bloodstone circle, I see. Lovely workmanship, isn’t it? I remember when that was put in; 1983, I believe. I do hope you aren’t allergic to corn?”

“No, not at all.” Politely, Carlos takes one of the muffins. “Did you say ‘bloodstone circle’?”

“Yes, for chanting.”

“Chanting,” Carlos repeats, blankly.

“You’ll be wanting to set one up at the lab, I’m sure. Best to ask around while you’re here; I think John Peters might have some extra bloodstones to sell. You know, the farmer? He’s been doing well this year.”

“Oh. I see.” Unable to think of a reply to this, he bites into the muffin. The elderly lady watches this operation intently.

“Do you like it, then?”

“Yes, very nice. Thank you, Miss —”

“Josephine. Josie to you, dear. They call me ‘old woman Josie,’ but I don’t mind that,” she chuckles. “It’s better than some nicknames I’ve had.”

“Josie. It’s nice to meet you. I’m —”

“Carlos. Yes, I know, dear. You’re a scientist, isn’t that right?”

“Uh, yes, I study —”

“You don’t think,” she interrupts him anxiously, “that the muffins are too bland without salt?”

“No, no, they’re fine. Are they for a special diet?”

She laughs. “Oh no. It’s just that the angels took all the salt in the house for a godly mission, you see, and I didn’t have time to buy more.”

“The angels?”

“Oh yes, they revealed themselves to me last night,” she says, jauntily. “They were ever so nice. You can’t imagine how helpful it is to have them around; they’re quite ten feet tall and they can reach so many things. The first thing they did, in fact, was fix my porch light; it’s been out for simply ages. You wouldn’t care to buy the old lightbulb, would you? There’s a big market for things that have been touched by an angel.”

“No, thank you,” gravely, but with a twitch of his mouth. “I don’t think my grant money would cover that.”

Josie smiles up at him, apparently oblivious to his amusement. “Well, that’s all right. They’ve already advertised it at the radio station, so I do expect to get some offers.”

“Well, good luck, then. Whoa, hold on a moment,” as she turns away.

“Yes, dear?”

“How did you know my name?”

She flaps a hand at him coquettishly. “Why, everyone knows that, young man,” she says. “News travels fast in Night Vale.”

Following her and the plate of muffins, which she bears into the auditorium like a standard, Carlos tries to suppress his reaction to what is obviously a local aphorism: foreboding.

 

It isn’t a prank.

The auditorium really is full of people, more people than he expected even for a real town meeting, and they’re obviously waiting for him. Conversation dies down to a murmur as he enters.

The people have a shared expression he doesn’t recognize. A gleaming, hungry look, like he’s the most fascinating thing they’ve seen in weeks. He passes it off quickly, glancing at his watch to hide his nervousness. 12:05.

“Hello, everyone,” he says, “I won’t keep you long,” and under cover of the resulting unconvinced chuckles, surveys the room — or at least, the closer part of it. The podium is bathed by a bright spotlight, but the corners are in shadows... and in the shadows, stealthy movement.

This is not, he decides, the right time to try to convince the entire town that they might be in danger. He hasn’t even convinced his own research team that they might be in danger. Instead, he tries to calm himself down with his old guest-lecture trick, rapidly focusing on individual faces that seem different.

Josie, over by the refreshment table, beaming encouragement.

A man with sideburns and a fleece jacket, which strikes Carlos as a particularly harebrained choice for Night Vale’s climate, frowning with something like distaste.

A man who might be Italian, with a pepper-and-salt mustache and a white sleeveless shirt with the somewhat alarming slogan _No one does a slice like Big Rico’s — NO ONE,_ apostrophe present and accounted for this time.

A weatherbeaten, shrewd-eyed man in overalls and an old sunhat — maybe the farmer with extra bloodstones (whatever they are) to sell — with a stem of desert grass between his teeth.

A man with short blond hair and glasses, in a black tie and a crisp white collared shirt, sleeves pushed casually back to reveal intricate swirls of dark ink marking his arms, who seems at once attentive and abstracted, gaze fixed both on the stage and beyond it on some dark infinity.

He’s hesitated too long. He takes a breath. Puts his hands in his pockets. Begins.

“My name’s Carlos. I’m a scientist. My research team has moved into town to observe the — unusual events common to this area, and I’m here to ask for the support of the community.”

“Monetary support?” Heads turn toward the speaker, who has dragged his attention from the rapid consumption of one of Josie’s muffins to ask this question. His suit is expensive, if oddly patterned — that must be a pattern, not a bloodstain, surely? — and he’s also sitting in an overstuffed blue chair that doesn’t match the rest of the furnishings at all. “Marcus Vansten, premier citizen; you might have heard of me. I was just wondering if the City Council has mandated the town to donate to your research program.”

“No,” Carlos assures him.

“No, we aren’t mandated to donate, or no, you haven’t heard of me?”

“Both correct,” suppressing the sidelong twitch of a smile again as Marcus Vansten’s expression changes to one of mingled relief and outrage. “I meant support in the sense of sharing information. If anyone’s willing to participate in one of the surveys we’ll be doing, for example, that would be very much appreciated. We plan to do some exploring in the greater Night Vale area, and we’d prefer to avoid accidental trespassing. And, if you notice any strange phenomena, you can call us. I’ve, er, got some business cards somewhere here, with the phone number.”

“You _are_ — sorry, I’m Larry Leroy — you _are_ aware of the Council’s prohibition on writing utensils, are you not?” breaks in a short, brown-haired man on the aisle, raising a hand.

“Yeah, that’s, uh — we got an email.”

“They’re very strict about it,” Leroy pursues, somewhat anxiously.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Leroy. It’s a little unusual, but we’re fine with keeping electronic records. Does anyone have any other questions?”

“I do.” The man with the sideburns, in a peremptory, carrying voice. “I think there’s something suspicious about all this.”

 _Uh oh._ Carlos holds down the impulse to glance around for obvious members of the press. “What do you mean?”

“I looked you up, you know. Online. You’ve got an impressive record; what are you doing in a little town like Night Vale? Or should I be asking what you’re hiding, Carlos the Scientist?”

Increased movement in the shadows. Carlos’s pulse speeds up, but he keeps his eyes steadily on the man’s face.

“I’m really not hiding anything, Mr. —?”

“Carlsberg. Sorry if I offended you,” with a contemptuous look that makes the apology sound rote. “I just think we have the right to know why you’re here.”

Carlos has no time to muster a reply before the blond man stands up. At his movement, the crowd falls silent at once. He shoots the sideburned man a glance of equal contempt, and Carlos is about to put up a hand to call a halt to what promises to be a disturbance to the meeting, when he speaks.

His voice turns Carlos’s knees to water.

“Much as I hesitate to agree with _you,_ Steve Carlsberg, I do think that’s a question we’re all curious about. Why don’t you tell us, Carlos, why you chose to come to Night Vale?”

It’s _the_ Voice.

Sonorous, darkly pitched, completely unmistakable.

The Voice of the dreams. The Voice of each individual insomniac night in his New York apartment, sitting and smoking and staring a hole in the diagrams and the notes and the graphs, the newspaper clippings that covered his wall near the end like a madman’s shrine, all of the data that made either no sense at all or far too much. The Voice he had feared was an echo of some vision, some fantasy too dangerous to describe, even to himself.

The Voice of Night Vale.

All the oxygen seems to have fled his lungs. Innumerable pairs of eyes are watching him, that avid gleam returning, and he feels like a man surrounded by wolves.

He can’t say, _You called me._

It would sound insane.

It _is_ insane.

Instead, he grasps for the simplest of his memorized answers for an occasion like this. It comes out sounding smoothly rehearsed, as if his vocal cords have gone on operating without his conscious control. “Well, Night Vale is, by far, the most scientifically interesting community in the U.S. I came to study... exactly what’s going on around here.” Defiantly, Carlos meets his interlocutor’s gaze, only to discover that the blond man is actually smiling — a brilliant, wistful, heart-wrenching smile — and suddenly he’s unable to help grinning back.

Josie claps her hands enthusiastically, and the blond man instantly follows suit, starting a storm of unexpected applause. More people stand up, clapping. Touched, in spite of his state of shock, Carlos feels his grin widen.

“Thank you,” he says, as it begins to die away, seizing the moment to escape from the stage and step quickly down the aisle, before it can become choked with people.

He arrives in the shadows to find them empty; a row of folding chairs that he could have sworn were occupied when he walked in, now deserted. Before he can do more than glance, however, his new acquaintances have converged on him _en masse_ and are smiling broadly, patting him on the shoulder, shaking his hand, showering him with bewildering introductions and even more bewildering compliments.

“John Peters. Finest invisible corn in town. Or anywhere, in fact! Pleased to see you anytime; the farm welcomes visitors.”

“Carlos, Trish Hidge, from the Mayor’s office. So delighted you could accommodate Ms. Winchell’s request.”

“I’m Big Rico. Saw you outside my place earlier. So nice to have a neighbor finally! That empty building’s been attracting too many of the right sort of customers, if you know what I mean. But, hey, come in soon, and I’ll give you a discount on any pie with blue tomato sauce — it’s this month’s special.”

“Leann Hart, of the _Daily Journal._ Tell me, what are your thoughts on the ancient and unsolvable mystery of human existence? Or the moon? We could use a good, snappy quote about the moon, it’s this week’s theme.”

“I thought it’d be a pity to waste the morning down here, but that was the best speech since the Sheriff’s Secret Police did that slideshow about limb recycling!”

Carlos succeeds at fending off these overtures with business cards, a straight face, and a determined amount of willpower, in spite of the recalcitrance of the back part of his mind, which is still trying to reconcile reality with the experience of hearing the Voice. Well, he succeeds until he turns to find its owner offering him a slender, long-fingered hand.

Up close, the blond man’s eyes are dark brown and intent, and there’s another tattoo on his forehead — a stylized oval shape with a horizontal bar through it, a symbol that seems familiar somehow.

“I’m Cecil,” he says, and the same doubled thrill of terror and awe touches Carlos again at the words. Real soundwaves hitting his eardrums. A real name. A real _person_. “Cecil Palmer. I’m a reporter, at Night Vale Community Radio. You don’t mind if I quote you on today’s show, do you?”

“No... of course not...” Carlos shakes hands with him, once again submerged by that persistent feeling of being in a dream.

“That’s great! My listeners will be thrilled to hear about it. We’ve been wondering all morning what you’ve been up to in your lab.”

“You... have? Why?”

Cecil shrugs, another smile flickering across his face. When he replies, the Voice has undergone a startling change, from the measured accents of a habitual public speaker to an unexpectedly charming, fluttered tone. “We _are_ a small town. Newcomers are always exciting. I, uh, I do have to get — get back to the station. This is only my first break, and Station Management won’t be happy if I’m late.”

Carlos blinks, uncertain of how to frame a response. “Well, then, you should...” he stumbles.

“Yes, I should...” Cecil gestures at the door, and seems to realize at the same moment as Carlos does that they are still standing with clasped hands. The contact is charged, unsettling, alive. Carlos wants to let go. He wants to never let go. He wants to run.

He says, aware that his own voice has dropped, “Uh, I don’t mean to keep you...”

“No, of course, yeah, I mean — thank you,” just as softly, and Cecil lets go of his hand, turns away quickly, and walks out of the auditorium. Carlos turns away, too, making a show of glancing at his watch again, so he won’t notice when the radio host looks back.

He notices anyway.

12:42.

 

“Wow, that was fast,” Dave says over the phone.

 _You have no idea._ Face burning, Carlos puts the heel of his hand to his forehead, steps from the still-crowded auditorium into the hush of the empty antechamber. “Never mind that, what’s the emergency?”

“Are you still at the Town Hall?”

“Yes. Why?”

“We’re not at the lab, we’re... uh... You’ve just gotta see this, boss. Or not see it, as the case may be.”

“You can’t give me at least a quick idea of the situation?”

“Um, it’s going to sound completely mad.”

Carlos grits his teeth, realizing that he’s already developing a headache. “Try me.”

“Okay, okay. We went next door to the pizza place, and while we were there, this woman came up to us. Melanie Gregor or Gregory or something like that, I’m not sure. She said there’s a house on her street that doesn’t exist.”

“Oh? That’s a coincidence; I just spoke to a lady who says the angels have revealed themselves to her.”

“Damn it, boss, I’m trying to _explain_ here.”

“Sorry. Go on.”

“So Phil started telling her how — how ridiculous that sounds, before I could stop him, and she just laughed at him, said we should go and see for ourselves. Gave us the address — 322 Desert Creek Road. It’s that new development, out on the other side of the highway?”

“Yes, I know where it is. I hope you’re not going to tell me Phil’s been arrested for breaking a window, or something?”

“No, no, it’s worse than that...”

“Worse how?”

A pause, during which Carlos wonders if it’s possible to measure the difference between the silence shared by two people conversing on a cell phone and the silence experienced by one person listening to a sinister, not-quite-dead air. Finally, Dave says, “It really _doesn’t_ exist.”

“The address doesn’t exist?”

“The _house_ doesn’t exist.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I told you it would sound insane. Can you just come over?”

“Okay, okay,” Carlos says. “You locked up before you left, right?”

“Yeah, we took your car. Eli’s got the keys, but he’s in the middle of analyzing —”

“Then I’ll just walk from here. Give me twenty minutes or so.”

“Thank you,” and Dave lets go of a held breath.

“Be there soon.” Carlos hangs up.

The walk is uneventful, except for the turmoil in his head. He sees nothing on his way to rival the baleful oddity of the dog park. His phone does not ring. The sense of being watched still presses on him, like a cold hand at the base of his neck. He’s furious with himself. Furious with the riddle of this place. Above all, furious with Cecil Palmer. With whatever mysterious hold Cecil Palmer already has over him, malevolent or merely powerful, a conspiracy or a merely a frightening coincidence; with Cecil Palmer’s _presence_ — not just a Voice but a man you can talk to, shake hands with, physically prove the existence of —

— fall in love with, _instantly_ —

— but he pushes that last thought violently away from him, wraps it and seals it and slams the lid down on it as if it were a biohazard.

No.

 

321 Desert Creek Road is a small, two-story white cottage with lavender trim and a lawn the size of a postage stamp. 323 Desert Creek Road is also a small, two-story white cottage with lavender trim and a lawn the size of a postage stamp. 322 Desert Creek Road, which is exactly where it’s supposed to be, appears to be identical to either or both of them.

A little knot of people is gathered at the curb nearby, watching as Marianne and Phil cautiously circle the house, the former taking thermometer readings and looking increasingly confused, the latter peering at the display of a large EMF reader and looking increasingly sour. Dave, who has obviously been keeping a lookout for Carlos, jogs up to him as soon as he gets within range of a block.

“The radio in your car is freaking out again,” he says. “It seems to be stuck on one station, and when you —”

“Tell me later,” Carlos cuts him off. The subject of radio stations is the last thing he wants to talk about.

“Right. I’ve been asking around about who built the houses on this street, but no one seems to know anything. Half of them can’t even tell me when they moved in, even though it’s obvious that this neighborhood can’t even be a year old.”

“But what did you mean when you said the house doesn’t exist? It’s right there.”

“It _looks_ like it’s right there. Until,” says Eli from his cross-legged position on the edge of the lawn, as they come to a halt beside him, _“behold!"_   and he passes up a digital camera.

The picture on the screen clearly shows 321 and 323, solid, sunlit, inarguably there, but 322 is gone like a missing tooth. There’s nothing in between except for an empty lot.

Carlos holds up the camera, looking from the recorded image to the house in front of them. He flips through the phone’s menu, finds the archive view. Dozens of near-identical pictures, in which the only variables are the position of the photographer and the lowering angle of the sunlight.

“Oh, it’s reproducible,” Dave says, before Carlos can ask. “My camera, too. Video. The Polaroid you carry in the car. Phil even borrowed a cheap Kodak from one of the neighbors and tried it. Same result.”

“You were right,” Marianne says, joining the group. “Here’s the second set of readings, Eli. No significant temperature differences anywhere around the place, not on the shadowed side, not even under those bushes.”

The intern pumps a fist in the air, grinning. “I knew it.”

“You don’t have to look so damn pleased about it,” Dave says.

“What’s going on here?” another voice chimes in. One of the neighbors, a balding man wearing a T-shirt with a badly screenprinted picture of what appears to be a jackal devouring a large bird on it. He has the same look on his face that Carlos noticed in the members of the crowd at the Town Hall; like a child at a party, hungry for cake but firmly drilled to wait until it’s been offered.

“It’s the house,” and Dave throws up his hands, embarrassed. “It... um, it doesn’t exist.”

“Really?” The man seems more interested than alarmed. “Wow, that’s unusual, isn’t it? Did you hear that, April?” turning to one of the other bystanders.

“Yeah, yeah, Tom, I heard. Well, that explains why no one’s ever moved in there. It’s too bad, we really do need more members for the bridge club. How can you tell it doesn’t exist?”

“We’re scientists,” Dave says. “We’ve done a number of tests — well, maybe our project leader here will have more ideas, but —”

Carlos is aghast to hear himself say the first thing that comes into his head. “Has it occurred to anyone to try knocking on the door?”

His team’s instant, shared expression of horror would be funny, under any other circumstances. Phil, stomping back across the lawn (or, more properly, the unseen sand of the empty lot) with unnecessary violence, “Do _you_ want to touch something that doesn’t fucking exist? Look,” and he bends to pick up a hand-sized stone, spinning it in a superbly aimed throw directly at the nearest window of 322.

It vanishes. The onlookers murmur appreciatively.

“We’ve got video of that, too,” Phil continues, grimly. “And whatever you throw doesn’t hit the ground. It just — it just disappears.”

“Convinced yet, Dr. Kirk?” Eli looks smug. “Is there or is there not such a thing as the paranormal?”

“If you think this — this _anomaly_ — puts _you_ on a better professional footing than it does _me_ , Intern Hirsch, you go knock on the door.”

“No way. You brought us here, _you_ go knock on the door.”

“No.”

“Come on, Mare, back me up here.”

“You shouldn’t make life-or-death decisions under the influence of so much testosterone,” Marianne says scornfully. “If you must know who’s more impressively endowed, go back to the lab and run size comparisons on your junk; don’t touch that house. It could be dangerous.”

“Well, if that’s the case, you’re obviously the man we want, Phil. I thought danger was your middle name. I dare you.”

Red-faced, “You’re behaving like a spoiled child.”

“Double _dog_ dare you,” Eli croons.

“Enough, Eli,” Carlos interposes firmly. “Stay here on the sidewalk, all of you, until I decide what to do about it.”

“Boss, it was your idea —” Eli begins, but falls silent when Carlos holds up an admonitory finger.

“Let me think. We have to, to warn someone. The police, or —”

“Oh,” says the woman named April reassuringly, “the Sheriff’s Secret Police probably already know about it. Or they do now, if they didn’t before. You’ve all been talking in such nice loud voices out here.”

“True,” nods her companion.

Carlos blinks. Looks at Tom. “What would you do, then, sir,” he asks, “if you wanted to warn people of something potentially dangerous in the area?”

“Hmm.” The man in the green T-shirt bites his lower lip in thought, then, with great decision, “I’d call the radio station.”

“Which one?”

Tom looks at Carlos in genuine astonishment. “ ‘Which one?’ NVCR, of course. Cecil’s your man for news like this.”

His expression must have changed somehow, because Marianne is giving him a strange look. “Who’s Cecil?”

He should have been braced for this question. He didn’t expect it so soon. Fuck. How conscious does he look? Can he even say Cecil’s name in a steady tone of voice?

Thankfully, the helpful neighbor is already explaining for him. “Cecil Palmer. The reporter on _Welcome to Night Vale_. I forgot you folks are new in town.”

“What time is it?” Carlos asks, turning away toward the open door of the Chevy.

“Er, 1:59.” Dave picks up Eli’s laptop. “Shall we find the number?”

“Hey, bring your own computer next time, Halland. I’m trying to take down those readings.”

“The Internet’s down,” Dave sighs. “You loaded approximately a thousand tabs in the browser again, didn’t you?”

“It’s not _my_ fault the network signal out here sucks.”

“I’ve got the number,” offers April politely. “I called last week. To tell them about that moose with all the eyes, the one on my living room ceiling. Here —”

And she recites it, and Carlos pulls out his phone to program it in, feeling, as he does so, that tapping out the pattern is an act of conscious damnation.

 

“Hello?” There’s that fluttered, almost giddy tone, right away. It doesn’t make Cecil’s voice any less galvanizing.

_Breathe, damn it. Breathe._

“Cecil? It’s Carlos. We met at the Town Hall —”

Marianne, listening, raises an eyebrow at him with a surprised little smile, but Dave is still frowning at the screen of the laptop, and Eli and Phil are too absorbed by their _sotto voce_ exchange of insults to notice.

“Of course. How are you? I mean, um,” Cecil clears his throat, “how is your _research?_  Intern Chad tells me you have a warning for me to deliver.” He says “warning” in the exact way most people would say “grocery list,” and this conversation is already even more unnerving than Carlos imagined it.

“Uh, yes. Are you on air right now?”

“No, no, commercial break, you know how it is. Don’t worry, though, I’ve had lifelong experience in delivering warnings. My listeners will hear all about it, just as soon as I get the light.”

Carlos opens his mouth, closes it again, pauses. “This is going to sound very bizarre.”

“Really? Delightful! Do tell.”

“All right, uh, I’m out in Desert Creek...”

“The new development, out back of the elementary school?”

“Yes. This house, 322 Desert Creek Road, it,” Carlos takes a deep breath, plunges in. “It doesn’t actually exist.”

“It doesn’t actually exist?” Cecil repeats. He sounds, not insulted, not even surprised, but pleasantly intrigued. “That _is_ unusual. As far as I know, all the other houses out there do. In what way does it... not actually exist? Is there something else there instead?”

“No, it _seems_ like it exists, I mean, like it’s just right there when you look at it. And it’s between two other identical houses —” Carlos pulls himself up short, aware that he’s babbling, but Cecil, far from being fazed, actually finishes the sentence.

“— so it would make more sense for it to be there than not?”

“I — yes. But we’ve done experiments, and it’s definitely not there. I know this doesn’t make much sense, but people have to be warned. We don’t, er, we don’t know exactly what would happen if someone got too close, for example,” he finishes lamely.

“Have you tried knocking on the door?”

“No, no, of course we haven’t tried knocking on the door,” Carlos assures him. Mistake. The others immediately raise their voices.

“Only because Phil’s too much of a tool to take a dare!”

“It doesn’t count!”

“What do you mean, it doesn’t count? Now you’re just making excuses.”

“You wouldn’t hold me to it if I refused a dare to jump off a cliff. How is this any different?”

“Look, man, there is obvious empirical evidence that jumping off a cliff would —”

“I said _enough,”_ Carlos growls over his shoulder at them, mortified.

“I could always let the town know you’re looking for volunteers,” suggests Cecil, quite seriously.

Appalled to find himself considering this, even for a moment, Carlos says abruptly, woodenly, “No, thank you. Just, please, spread the word. We really appreciate your help.”

“Of _course_ , Carlos. Feel free to call again. I mean, if you discover anything else newsworthy.”

“All right. Goodbye,” and he hangs up quickly. Before he can do what he realizes he desperately wants to do, which is to ask Cecil for an explanation of bloodstone circles, or the mysterious lurkers in the shadows, or Pamela Winchell and her disappearing act.

To ask Cecil for an explanation of his own dreams.

He turns back, instead, to discover that all four of his team members are staring at him with rampant curiosity.

“Wait, did that reporter just _believe_ you?”

“What happened at the Town Hall, anyway?”

“What is going on here?”

He sighs. Resigns himself. “All right. We’ll discuss it on the way back. Did you at least save me some pizza?”

 

The leftover pieces of pizza do indeed feature blue tomato sauce. Carlos decides to assume for the moment that it’s food coloring. He has too much else on his mind. He drives one-handed, slowly, in the right lane, taking bites in between glances at the unfolded survey map on the dashboard.

They left a warning sign, hastily printed with the help of the obliging April (whose living room was mercifully free of horned ruminants, gravity-defying or otherwise), stapled to the fence outside the nonexistent house. Phil was in favor of calling the police as well, but the web browser has crashed so catastrophically that Dave is now in the middle of rebooting Eli’s laptop, muttering about the unreliability of Night Vale’s service towers and the stubbornness of interns who refuse to use any operating system more user-friendly than Linux.

Marianne, who has worked with Carlos the longest, seems to recognize the mood he’s in. She’s sitting in the center of the back seat, insulating Eli from both Dave and Phil, and steering the conversation firmly into practical waters. She says now, “Are we still going to begin the seismological survey this afternoon? We don’t necessarily need daylight for that.”

“I don’t like the idea of being out in the desert after dark.” Eli, uncharacteristically, sounds shaky.

“It’s only 3:45,” points out Dave, looking at the dashboard clock.

“It’s not like we’d be driving out into the open desert. It’s an unmanned monitoring station, right up there,” and Marianne leans forward to tap the spot on the map. “I just think... we should continue with our program for the day. Establish — establish normal parameters.”

“She’s right,” Phil says from the front seat. “I, for one, am going to end up in a rubber room if we have to spend the rest of the day unpacking boxes.”

“I have no objection.” Carlos takes another bite of his slice of pizza. The sauce does taste slightly different; there’s a tang to it that tomato sauce by itself doesn’t have. _Spices, that’s all,_ he tells himself. _Something local I don't recognize._

“You are going to tell us what’s going on, though, right?” Dave snaps the cover of the laptop shut, catching Carlos’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “I take it the Town Hall thing wasn’t a setup after all?”

“No.” Carlos turns off on Main Street.

“And... that woman... Winchell? You figure she’s really the Mayor?” Eli asks.

“Circumstantially. I spoke with one of her staffers, very briefly.”

“What about this reporter? Cecil?” Marianne grins. “On a scale of one to Eli, how much of a conspiracy nut is he?”

"I don’t know. He just introduced himself.”

“Seems quite the local celebrity.” Mischievously, “We should look up his show. Come on, Phil, you’re closest, turn on the radio.”

Carlos manages an unconcerned tone as Phil leans over to find the right dial. “I thought the radio was broken again?”

“Oh yeah.”

“You should hear that, though,” Phil says. “Just for a minute.”

The click of the dial inaugurates a heavy silence, a silence the same texture as the silence Carlos heard outside the dog park, on the other end of his phone. It pools into the car like dark, viscid water. Without thinking, he drops the pizza crust, knocks Phil’s hand away from the dial to shut that silence off, when a burst of static hisses through the speakers.

“The fuck, boss? Are you all —” Phil is cut off abruptly as the static builds sharply and then drops away again.

“That’s a weird frequency,” Marianne says, leaning forward again to inspect the display. “It’s too weak, we shouldn’t even be able to hear it. Unless we’re right on top of it.”

“The broadcast is coming from inside the car,” laughs Dave, waving his fingers on the air as if in the middle of a campfire story.

Carlos snaps the dial off, makes a sharp turn onto Third. “I want it traced. Eli, you’re excused from hauling duty. Get your recording equipment in order and stay here to work on it.”

“Yes!” Eli grins triumphantly. “I’ll have the transmitter located and the code cracked as soon as you get back.”

“Unless there _is_ no code,” Phil mutters.

“Oh, there’ll be a code.” The intern reaches past Marianne to pull his laptop back out of Dave’s hands, opening it up again with relish. “There always is. Boss, you think someone’s spying on us?”

Dave loses his smile. “Oh, that’s ridiculous. Why would anyone be spying on us?”

Carlos makes no answer, pulling the car into the loading area in front of the lab. Opens the driver’s side door and steps out, away from their worried looks.

 

The monitoring station off Route 800 is overshadowed by a crumbling gray billboard which might once have been white, its jaunty 1920s-style orange printing still visible underneath a scrim of dirt.

THE SHERIFF’S SECRET POLICE REMIND YOU:  
IF YOU _SEE_ SOMETHING  
 _SAY_ NOTHING  
AND DRINK TO FORGET

“Are you sure this is the right place?” Dave, dubious. “How old is this map, anyway?”

“It’s from 2005,” Marianne says, “but I’m sure it’s the right place. I called the science director at the community college earlier, remember? There’s someone on the cleaning staff who’s supposed to let us in.”

The desert wind smells of sagebrush and honey, with a metallic tang of something Carlos can’t identify underneath that. He approaches the front door of the building. There’s an electronic keypad next to it, a red light glowing, but as he raises a hand to knock, there’s a click and a beep and the light turns green. He jumps at the sudden shriek of outraged metal. Then the door swings open noiselessly, revealing a man in overalls and a T-shirt bearing the faded inscription _Dark Owl Records,_ towing a service cart from which protrude the handles of various tools, including, startlingly, a large machete.

The janitor squints up at him. “What can I do you for?”

“Hi, I’m with the research team. My name’s —”

“Carlos, right. With the hair. Come on in, I got a call about you.” He props the door open and turns, dragging the cart after him with another banshee squeal.

Following, Carlos wonders if he’ll ever get used to how quickly the strangers in Night Vale keep recognizing him. And what his hair has to do with it. “Do you mind if I ask why you have a machete with your cleaning tools?”

The janitor glances back at him, as if wondering if he’s serious, then snorts a laugh. “Ha! Thought the whole ‘scientific temperament’ thing was a cliché. You better hire someone to caretake your own lab, if you can’t tell a broom from a shotgun barrel. I know someone in the Housecleaners, Henchpeople and Government Scapegoats Association who might be able to help.”

Carlos isn’t sure whether to be insulted or amused himself. “Thank you, but our intern can handle it.”

The janitor snorts again, this time in irritation. “Well, holler if you need me. I’m working on the restrooms right now. Just be careful, if you close the front door again you’ll get locked out.”

“We _do_ know how to operate a basic security system,” Phil says, on the edge of exasperation, carefully carrying in the seismograph they brought with them, but the janitor just gives them all an inscrutable look and retreats down the hallway, trailed by another eldritch sound from his cart.

Dave, examining a corkboard covered in printed diagrams and lists, whistles. “Whoever chose this site knew what they were doing. Bedrock, right up near the surface. Look, this survey map’s much better than ours. 2011.”

“Here, Phil, I’ve found a power outlet, hand me the —” Marianne stops midsentence as she notices that Carlos hasn’t moved from in front of the nearest monitor. “Boss? What is it?”

“I think it’s malfunctioning. Look at these readings.”

Dave peers over his shoulder. “Whoops. That’s — what — a 9.5? Shit, lucky we came out here. I wonder how long it’s been on the blink?”

“Marianne, this is closest to your field; what do you think?”

“I think it’s a weird coincidence that this one’s showing the same seismic shifts. And this one, too — look, the transverse waves are exactly the same, look at the shape.”

“Maybe the electronic leads underground are FUBARed somehow?” Phil suggests.

“That,” says Marianne, “would not explain _that,”_ and she points to an old-fashioned horizontal pendulum, in frantic motion on a completely still floor, its tip scratching mad wide waves into the surface of a slowly unrolling piece of paper.

They stare at it in silence for fully a minute. Then Carlos swallows hard. “Test it. Test all of them. There is no such thing as an earthquake you can’t feel.”

 

“Why, Carlos, I didn’t expect to hear from you again so soon.” From anyone else, this sentence would come out sounding arch; articulated by the Voice — and damn it, he really needs to stop mentally capitalizing that — it’s smoothly polite, delighted, just a tiny bit breathless.

Like _he’s_ the one making _Cecil_ nervous.

He hardens his own voice. Tries to sound cold, even. Maybe that will cancel out the dangerous warmth that tightens his chest at this thought. “Cecil. Thank you for your time.”

“Not at all. You’re out at the monitoring station, right?”

“Yes, I...” He trails off. Notices his hands are shaking.

“You have something to tell me?” Cecil prompts, after a pause.

Carlos sighs. “The seismic monitors are recording wild shifts, some of them almost off the scale. Meaning the ground should be going up and down all over the place.”

There’s a faint shuffling on the other end of the phone, as if Cecil is standing up to look around. “Should it really? I haven’t noticed it going up, or down, or sideways or anywhere. Not so much as a tremor.”

“Neither have we. So we double-checked all the monitors...”

“Right, uh huh?”

“...and they’re fine.”

“In working order?”

“Perfect working order. We brought a seismograph with us that we tested before we left for Night Vale. Double-checked that one too. There’s... there’s no doubt the monitors are functioning.”

“So, in short, there _appears_ to be a catastrophic series of earthquakes going on, right here in town?”

“Yes.”

“But absolutely nobody can _feel_ them.”

“No.”

“Well,” says Cecil, “today certainly is turning out to be eventful! At this rate I’ll be here late, but I don’t mind that. I never want to say good night until I’m certain I’ve reported everything there is to be reported.”

“You —” Flatly. “You believe me.”

Another short silence, this one rather stunned. Then Cecil laughs, a warm sound, slightly mocking, but yes, he _is_ breathless. “Of course I believe you, Carlos,” he says, in the exact way most people would say “Of course the sun will come up tomorrow,” and oh, this is far, far out of his grasp. “Who could doubt you?”

 _Everyone. Anyone. Fuck, Cecil,_ I _doubt me. I doubt_ everything _, except that I know your voice, and even that_ —

But before he can do more than waver on the verge of saying any of these things, anything at all that he can’t take back, there’s another, more sudden soft shuffling, and Cecil’s saying, “Oh dear, excuse me, Carlos, I’ve got to go on air —” and the call clicks off.

He lowers the phone, blood thundering soft and implacable in his ears. Stares out across the scrublands, to where the Sand Wastes begin, a distant shimmer of heat. Lets out a breath.

“Boss? Are you all right?”

He’s got just enough presence of mind left to appreciate the irony of his behavior as he thrusts the phone back into his pocket like a teenager caught with contraband. He keeps his back to the door of the building another moment, composing himself, and then turns to Marianne, who’s standing just outside it and looking at him with concern. Raises his hands.

“I’m not smoking, if that’s what you mean. Look,” and he pulls out the crumpled pack, tosses it to her. “Three left, all marked. And I won’t be able to trick you, now that none of us are allowed to use pens.”

“That isn’t — I mean — I’m glad for you, Carlos.” She doesn’t even look inside the pack, just crosses her arms. “Don’t think I’m not. It’s just that you’ve been troubled all day.”

“These discoveries — that house —”

“You were troubled when you arrived at that house. Troubled when we got here. You think someone’s _spying_ on us. Yeah, okay, I’m glad you’re not smoking, but I wouldn’t have busted your ass about it, not after the day we’ve had. Did someone — has someone threatened you?”

He says nothing. Tests his ability to keep a neutral expression.

Fails. Obviously. Marianne’s eyes harden. “How? Why?”

“I can’t tell you.”

She takes a step forward. “For fuck’s sake, why not?”

He looks up and around them elaborately, indicating hidden watchers. By now, he doesn’t doubt that they’re there.

Marianne sighs. She stuffs the pack into the pocket of her jeans. “I’m keeping this,” she says, “until the end of the day, and you are not allowed to buy any more.”

“Yes, ma’am,” smiling crookedly.

Unexpectedly, she reaches up and stands on tiptoes to hug him, wrapping her arms around his neck. Surprised, he stiffens, then gently brings a hand up to touch his friend’s shoulder. He’s uncomfortable, still taut with fear and what he still doesn’t want to admit is arousal. With the aftermath of Cecil’s voice.

“I’m... I’m sorry,” he says.

“Sorry for what, boss?” She draws back, looking at him levelly.

“I’ve put you all in danger.”

“Oh, Carlos,” she says, shaking her head over him. “We’re a team, remember? We agreed about this. We’re adults — however much Phil and Eli might act otherwise — and this was our decision, too.”

“Right,” he mutters.

“You remember showing me your notes, back in New York?”

“Yeah. I suppose I should have figured if that didn’t frighten you off, nothing would.”

“Don’t be a dork.” She taps his shoulder with one small fist, pretending fierceness. “Don’t do that to yourself. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. I mean, it — it will be, when it’s complete. When your theory is complete. I hate this place already, I feel like I’m never going to understand it, but that — that pattern behind things, it’s coming clearer. If we can just separate what we’re seeing from what’s _really_ not there... then we’ll have the answer.”

“You aren’t prepared,” he says, softly, “you _can’t_ be prepared to die for that answer.”

She drops her other arm, steps back from him completely. “And _you_ are?”

He doesn’t reply, but she catches something in his eyes; he sees her seeing it. Then Dave and Phil are in the doorway behind her, covering their own disquiet by arguing over seating arrangements in the car.

“I called shotgun first.”

“You can’t have, I said it on the way here. Besides, you did the heavy lifting last time. What there is of it.”

“Dr. Halland, this propensity for lying is becoming pathological.”

“Marianne heard me — didn’t you, Mare?”

Marianne rolls her eyes, smiling again, and turns to take the seismograph from Dave. “Damn, just when I was starting to be glad we didn’t bring the intern, I find out he’s contagious. Give me that; I’ll take shotgun. You can fight over it next time.”

What she might have said to him further, Carlos can’t afterward extrapolate.

 

The sun sinks fast, like mercury in water, touching strange green and silver tints aflame in the sky above Radon Canyon, as they glide back along Route 800, over the surface of an apparently moveless earth.

Carlos is tired of driving slowly; he ignores the protesting rattle of the Chevy’s transmission and pushes the speed limit. No one says a word, and aside from distant cars, so far away that they might actually be ghosts or mirages, the road is empty. The last calmly ferocious light of a desert afternoon lies in tiger-stripes over the dashboard, over Marianne’s pale, freckled hands folded in her lap, over his own hands closed on the steering wheel, turning bronze where they touch his darker skin.

The dashboard clock has joined the list of broken and/or intermittently nonfunctional car appliances, along with the radio, the air conditioner and the center rear seatbelt. It flashes _12:00 12:00 12:00_ like a silent alarm. As they pull into the lab’s parking zone, Dave asks, “What time is it?”

“8:58, as you’d know if you bothered to wear a watch.” Phil isn’t too tired to bring up another well-used subject for argument, but Dave refuses the bait, opening the car door and stepping out. Marianne smiles at Carlos and holds out her hand for the car keys, ready for her turn to unpack the trunk. He hands them to her. Waits a moment for the engine to cool before following.

Sitting on the bench outside Big Rico’s is a big, rangy man who looks like he might be Russian or Polish, wearing jeans, a ruffled white shirt, and a cartoonishly fake Native American headdress of dyed plastic feathers. Despite Carlos’s instinctive flinch at this racist getup, the man gives him a significant glance, as if they’re sharing some kind of secret. His eyes are deeply set and his face in shadow, a gleam of sunset light on bared teeth giving him the appearance of wearing a death’s-head grin.

Carlos, who has never felt farther removed from superstition, reacts with nothing except disgust. He pointedly turns away, goes to check that the security system has not been disturbed.

If it has, he’s unable to tell.

 

Eli’s not in the lab. The fire door has been propped open and he’s standing out back, fingers curled into the chainlink, staring at the last burning rind of the sunset like a man willing himself blind. There’s something about his unmoving posture that silences all of them.

“Boss,” he says, as Carlos puts a concerned hand on his shoulder, “the — the sun is _late.”_

“What?”

Eli turns, but he doesn’t look at the others. He looks up into Carlos’s face, and his own is washed smooth with shock; he looks twelve instead of twenty-one. “I checked my phone, my computer, the clock I set this morning. I even went next door and borrowed this,” and he holds up a heavy gold watch, undoubtedly the property of Big Rico. “The sun was supposed to set at 8:52. It’s 9:02 now.”

Carlos holds up his wrist, looking from the expensive watch to his own cheap digital one, and Eli is right. Big Rico’s watch can’t be off by more than ten or fifteen seconds.

“Well?” and Eli sounds almost triumphant, like he did earlier, sitting in front of the nonexistent house. “Ashamed of yourselves for missing this one yet? I bet you didn’t find anything this crazy at the monitoring station.”

“Better not put money on that,” says Dave.

“Why? What happened?”

“Phil can tell you. I’m going to go check that everything’s shut down properly. And then I’m going to have a drink, if any of you care to join me.”

 

All four of them have bottles of beer — Dave’s empty, Marianne’s barely touched, Phil’s and Eli’s each with only a swallow or two left in them — by the time Carlos is on hold with the radio station again.

“Put it on speaker phone this time, why don’t you?” suggests Dave.

“Not after —” and Marianne gestures around at the bottles.

“Don’t be ridiculous, one drink isn’t enough to get even the kid tipsy. We want in on the conversation this time, boss.”

Carlos takes the phone away from his ear, sets the speaker mode without replying. Puts it down on the table next to his own unopened bottle. Returns to his slow pacing. Maybe he’ll be facing away from them when it rings through.

No such luck.

The Voice hits him like a drug, like radiation, like the first bite of cancerous smoke in his lungs, like a longed-for breeze on a scorching day. “Hello again, Carlos.”

Hoping he sounds neutral, “Hello, Cecil.”

“Your discoveries are becoming the top story today; it’s quite exciting. We’ve had a really good listener response about the intangible earthquakes.”

This cheerful announcement makes him want to laugh, but he has a strong suspicion it would come out sounding hysterical. He mentally whispers a quick prayer of thanks that the others are all still too focused on the half-dismantled desk clock in the center of the table to notice the change in his expression. “Uh. That’s... nice?”

“I have had to explain that I can’t give official advice about disaster-insurance-related sacrifices, but — oh, sorry, Carlos, I shouldn’t just keep talking when you, I mean — you have more news, right?” That sudden and characteristic shift, from dark-voiced, level-headed reporter to fluttered, excited boy afraid he’s already tripped over his own feet somehow, brings Carlos’s mental image of Cecil into clear focus: standing, one hand resting on the back of an office chair, the other perhaps twisting unconscious loops in the cord of a headset.

He _does_ make Cecil nervous. He isn’t just imagining that.

Damn, damn, damn.

Aloud, guarding his tone, “Yes. Sorry about the speaker phone; I’m with my team at the lab. We, uh — well, did you notice that the sun didn’t set at the correct time?”

“It didn’t? You’re all quite certain?”

“Of course we’re _quite certain.”_ Phil is raising his hackles already. “We checked multiple clocks.”

“And the clocks are all working,” Marianne adds.

“What time do you have there at the radio station?” Eli asks, glancing quickly up at Carlos.

“Uh, let me see.” The sound of Cecil rummaging amongst papers crackles in the phone’s speaker. “Sorry. Management had us take down all the wall clocks last Monday, after they started running backwards, and they haven’t said anything about putting them back up yet. Er, my watch here says 9:23, does that help?”

“Well, it’s _correct,_ but I don’t know if it _helps,”_ Phil says.

“Did the sun set earlier than it was supposed to, or later?” asks Cecil.

“Later,” Dave replies.

“Exactly ten minutes later, to be precise,” Eli quantifies.

“Fashionably late,” Marianne says absently, still staring at the plastic innards of the desk clock.

“Have you come up with any explanations?”

This question produces a baffled series of murmurs from Dave and Marianne, a look of intense inward concentration from Eli, and a stare of outrage from Phil. Icily, “Mr. Palmer, are you at all familiar with basic scientific facts?”

Cecil’s amused laughter actually makes Marianne look up at the phone, shivering slightly. “Oh, certainly — well, I mean, I _was,_ once. We’re all scientists at one time of our lives or another, aren’t we? But no, not now. I’m really not remotely qualified to speculate. I only wondered. It’s what I do, professionally... wonder about things.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint you,” Phil mutters. “Unless Carlos has had one of his brilliant last-minute ideas.”

Eli sits up hopefully, but Carlos shakes his head. “No, I’m afraid that’s all we have to report.”

“Oh?” He’s starting to recognize how it sounds when Cecil’s disappointed: the Voice getting softer, losing some of its elemental power to a musing sadness. “Oh, well then, thank you, Carlos. Let me know if you do think of something. I’m on the air until midnight.” A pause, so slight that Carlos hopes he’s the only one to notice it. Then, “Goodbye.”

The click of the receiver leaves a small space of silence behind it. Phil tips back the last of his beer, the others go back to their murmurings of confusion, and Carlos goes back to pacing wordlessly, slowly breathing out relief and shame and an unexpected feeling of desertion. Not being able to hear Cecil’s voice is already like being separated from something vital by safety glass — like having a sense that he normally relies on walled away behind a layer of insulation.

What has he been doing, calling the station on any excuse that offers itself? He should be staying _away_ from Cecil, as far away as he can get. He’s accumulated nothing but evidence that it’s bad for him.

As if his dreams are not enough.

If Cecil has really done something to him, something — he still doesn’t like the nonspecificity of the word, but there isn’t a better one — paranormal, then what else can his attraction be but an extension of it? Some kind of implanted Stockholm syndrome?

Or, if it’s all a coincidence, if Cecil is innocent (and he can already see his own bias toward _that_ theory), then he could get Cecil hurt, maybe even put his life in danger, all for the sake of as stupidly romantic an infatuation as he’s ever come down with.

He shakes his head again, makes himself come back to earth.

Phil is saying, “Well, that was a waste of time.”

Dave grins in response. “Oh, come on, Phil, at least you can’t argue that we should’ve called the police this time. What good would it have done? Even on such a short experience of this town, I don’t hesitate to declare the hypothesis that they’d try to arrest the sun.”

Marianne laughs. “I think there must be something in the water,” she says, a little unsteadily. “I should have insisted on the filters. Oh, God, there’s got to be something weird going on with this guy Cecil. He made it sound like this is all just a regular day at the office.”

“Maybe it is,” Eli says, still watching Carlos.

“Heaven fucking forbid,” says Dave, and gets up to open the refrigerator again.

“His voice, though.” Marianne picks up her neglected bottle and drinks with more decision. “Nobody that weird has a right to have a voice that sexy.”

Dave rolls his eyes. “It didn’t sound above the ordinary to me.”

“That’s because you’re a man.”

“No, no, it’s because he’s a tightass. _I’ll_ admit the observation has justice,” says Eli.

“I didn’t know you were into that, kid.”

“I’m not,” cheerfully. “I’m just jealous. If I had a voice like that, I’d be married three times by now. Come on, boss, back me up.”

Carlos, in spite of the heaviness of his preoccupation, can’t help smiling back. “I wouldn’t marry you once, Eli, let alone three times.”

The others laugh, with some measure of relief, and Phil stands up to take the fresh bottle Dave is holding out to him. “Please tell me we’re not having blue pizza for dinner, too,” he says with relative mildness. “I want something normal for once today.”

“There’s an Arby’s down at the corner,“ Eli says. “I can walk it. What do you all want, the usual?”

“You shouldn’t go out alone after dark,” Marianne says, sharply.

“It’s like four blocks, Mare, no one’ll kill me. Unless Big Rico’s already put a hit out on me for forgetting to return his watch.”

Recognizing the over-bright tone, Carlos narrows his eyes. “I’ll go with you,” he says.

“Okay,” too quickly, and he sees Eli’s shoulders relax as he follows the intern to the front door.

What little he was able to find out about the subject of reeducation in Night Vale never made it onto his apartment wall — there were some things he didn’t want to chance anyone seeing — but he finds he can recall the details with unpleasant clarity. If it turns out he is the target of some kind of conspiracy, he can at least depend on Eli to believe, and act on, a warning that none of the others would credit yet.

Even after the things they’ve seen. 

 

Eli appears to have bounced back from the day’s mental trauma with an elasticity Carlos envies. He’s actually sauntering down the street, chin up and eyes alert. Carlos waits until two blocks drop away behind them, along with the muted noise and glow from Big Rico’s establishment, which seems to be even busier after dark, before saying, “I _have_ noticed that this is the wrong direction, Eli, in case you wondered.”

“I know, boss. Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about my assignment, even if you have.”

Carlos had, until just now. He catches Eli’s shoulder, slowing him. Urgently, “Do you mean you traced that signal? Where are you taking me?”

“The radio station, of course,“ Eli says, gesturing to the tower rising in graceful geometry in the distance. Carlos’s hand tightens on his shoulder, and he laughs. “You’re not afraid, are you? Not now that I’ve found some real evidence of your theory?”

“You’re telling me the signal on my car radio came from the station?”

“No, actually the signal on your car radio came from over that way — the mini-mall on Flint Drive. Sporting goods store, with a nice flat roof for helicopter landings. The black helicopters, that is, not the blue ones or the ones with the weird murals. I’ve been watching the sky since we got here. Now who’s counting their theories before they’re hatched?”

“We’re not investigating _that_ , are you insane?”

Eli rolls his eyes. “Jury’s still out on my sanity quotient, I’ve been told — but no, I agree with you there. I’m pretty sure they haven’t caught me counterspying yet, and this black box,” he taps his pocket, “should upfuck the instruments of anyone trying to listen to us. We can talk now. Unless you’ve lost your confidence in my skill?”

“No,” Carlos says, still staring at the slow blink of the radio tower’s red light. Imagining Cecil’s voice pulsing out with it over the drowsy town, the ghost of an ocean current over sand that has long forgotten water. “But why the radio station?”

“Because I came out here earlier, walked the street to do a long-range sweep with the Beholdinator, and, Carlos, it’s an _energy center.”_ Eli’s all but glittering with manic excitement. “The first one we’ve found! It’s a source of paranormal activity, and we can measure it! Get it all written up and compared to control conditions! No more than twenty minutes, I promise.”

“Okay, first of all,” Carlos holds up a hand, “as I have already told you, we are _not_ calling this thing the Beholdinator. Secondly,” cutting Eli off as the intern opens his mouth to protest, “you are not to pass through the door of that station as long as you remain in my employ. Are we clear?”

Eli shuts his mouth again, astonished. Then, slowly, “Boss... you know something. What is it?”

“I know it’s dangerous. Give me your word, Eli.”

“All right, swear to dog, I won’t go inside the fucking radio station,” in a long-suffering tone. “But how are we going to get the readings if it’s too —”

“I’ll do it,” and Carlos firmly, recklessly, holds out his hand.

Eli surveys him doubtfully, but the obedience is by now as habitual to him as the secrecy. He takes the handmade reader out of his pocket and reluctantly hands it over.

“Stay here,” Carlos tells him. “You have your twenty minutes, starting now. It’s 9:51. If I don’t come back, don’t follow me: go back to the others and start preparing to get out of town.”

“Get out of — shit, boss, what do I tell them?”

“Whatever you think will get them to agree.”

“If you think it’s that dangerous, why have you been _calling_ the station?” Eli demands.

Carlos closes his eyes for a moment in weary exasperation. “I... Eli, listen, you just have to trust me. Do you trust me?”

“Of course I trust you, but —”

“Then _stay here,”_ and Carlos turns quickly and walks down the hill, before he can think better of what he’s about to do.

 

Memory falls softly around him like a curtain as he crosses the shadowy parking lot of the little building: here’s five-year-old Carlos, in Santa Vista, California, visiting his _abuela_ all by himself. Five-year-old Carlos in new glasses too big for him and new shoes uncomfortably too small, sitting in the twilit kitchen and watching as the old woman’s clever fingers transform a strip of paper into a five-pointed star, careful folds and counterfolds.

“You next,” she says, and Carlos picks up another strip of paper. Tells her, as she guides him through the pattern, that the nearest star to Earth is over four light-years away, so if it dies, it will be four years before anyone knows.

“It won’t die,” Grandma María says, comfortably.

“Everything dies,” says Carlos, five-year-old Carlos who clearly remembers his father’s funeral two years earlier, who did not turn away or cry when his friend Juan’s dog was run over and killed by a car, at home in L.A.

“I know, _angelito_. I know you miss your papa. But you will not forget him, not in four years, not ever. We are luckier than stars, you see.”

He is, not simply comforted, but struck by the words. To Grandma María, carrying him to bed even though he is old enough now to go on his own, pressing her dry, gentle kiss on his forehead as a seal against nightmares, love is a constant, not a variable. If that’s true, then people — some people, at least — might indeed be luckier than stars.

It won’t occur to him for several more years to wonder how precisely you define that luck.

 

The front door of the radio station has a keycard reader next to it, but it’s standing slightly open, little swirls of sand blowing in and out like breath. He hears desultory conversation inside, laughter, the unmistakable clicking keys of an old typewriter.

And Cecil’s voice. Muted by distance and the soundproofing of the recording booth, but there.

He’s about to relax insensibly at the sound of it when something else stiffens him. The tips of his fingers have barely brushed the cold metal of the doorhandle when it rises up in him, serpentine and terrifying, the tendrils of it wrapping around his insides like prey. The mad octopus embrace of something intent on eating him from the inside out, and he recoils from the door. The lights on the reader in his other hand come on, flickering erratically. He hasn’t even switched it away from standby.

He stares at the door, convinced in spite of himself that something on the other side of it is staring back. Tells himself fiercely to stop being irrational. Is this a panic attack? Some sort of side-effect of being near a paranormal energy center? Or is he so anxious that he’s imagining psychosomatic monsters to keep himself away?

Then Cecil’s voice stops, and at the same time Carlos feels himself released from the strange pressure. He stumbles forward, catches himself on the edge of the doorframe, breathless, biting off a fervent curse so quickly that he nearly catches his tongue between his teeth. The inside of his head feels — _wrong,_ somehow, as if his thoughts are furniture, now scratched and thrown into disorder by the intrusion of a stranger. Uppermost, the blunted edges of a question: _How am I going to survive this?_

“Hello? Someone out there?” A young man’s voice. A teenager, maybe eighteen or nineteen, with a crew cut and a friendly smile, pulling the door open for him. “Hey — you must be Carlos.”

He manages a nod. Holds out his hand. “Sorry... to disturb you. May I just... come in for a moment?”

The boy shakes his hand. “Sure. What can I do for you? Oh, I’m Chad, the intern. We spoke on the phone earlier, but only for a minute.”

“Yes, I remember.” Recovering his breath, Carlos follows Chad into the station’s tiny front room. “I know this is, uh, unexpected, but I need to see the rest of the building. I’m testing for materials,” holding up the reader, which has not abated its flashing. It’s a blatant lie — in spite of the auditory feedback module Eli insisted on, no one could possibly mistake his invention for a Geiger counter — and he mentally crosses his fingers.

Chad satisfies his expectations by blinking in incomprehension. “Really? Advanced scientist stuff, huh? You need to see the _whole_ building? I mean, I’m sure nobody will mind if you come into the studio or the break room, I can type up a visitor’s pass for you, but —” he looks over his shoulder nervously — “I don’t want to disturb Station Management. No one’s allowed in their office.”

Carlos can’t help a sideways twitch of a smile. “They can’t be worse than my last grad supervisor.”

Chad’s eyes widen in horror. “No, no, you don’t understand. _Nobody_ goes in there. Not _ever.”_

Raising an eyebrow, “Then how do you talk to them?”

“You... you just sort of have to shout through the door.”

Carlos studies his face: he’s not only serious, but frightened. Capitulates. “All right. The studio’s fine. I can widen the range on my instrument; it shouldn’t bother any of your equipment.”

Sighing in relief, Chad dives behind the desk, rolling a small piece of paper into the typewriter’s carriage. “Okay... date... time... er... what’s your blood type?”

“What do you need that for?”

Chad blinks at him, surprised by the question. “Well, it is traditional. But I can leave it off if you’re in a hurry.”

“Not to be rude, but I _am_ in a hurry,” Carlos says, gently. “My colleagues are waiting for me, and I don’t want to interrupt your broadcast for longer than I need to.”

Extricating the paper, Chad shrugs and holds it out to him. “No problem with that. We’re on a break now anyway. You can’t miss the studio: end of the hallway, door’s always open. Just walk quietly.”

 

The recording studio is sparsely furnished, lit only by the undersea glow of several monitors and the bright moonlight.

One window looks south, over the street and Mission Grove Park beyond it, trees stirred by a fugitive wind and a fire burning somewhere in the distance among them. The other looks north, over the margin of the scrublands, the crescent moon hanging above the horizon like a picture on the wall of a deserted house.

Carlos had expected it to be crowded — an operator in front of the old-fashioned switchboard, a bustle of technicians with earpieces and coffee mugs. But no: either he’s more ignorant about staffing procedure at radio stations than he thought, or else circumstance has decreed, specifically for the purpose of undoing him, that all of these people should just now have stepped out of the room.

And for a moment he _is_ undone.

He can’t possibly use words like _perfect_ and _beautiful_ to describe someone he’s known for less than eleven hours, it’s juvenile and ridiculous and utterly beneath his dignity, but... there’s something extraordinary about Cecil that he can’t find any other words for, either. And to be abruptly alone with him wasn’t in the plan.

The door of the recording booth is open and Cecil’s leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed lazily behind his head and the collar of his shirt loosened, looking at something on the screen of a heavy old laptop that looks almost as battered and ancient as the antique microphone mounted next to him. His moonlit profile is grave, attention fixed broodingly somewhere far away, but as soon as he hears footsteps, his sudden smile banishes all trace of melancholy.

“Hey, Chad, you have to come see this video I found earlier, it’s —” He checks, astonished, when he meets Carlos’s gaze, but then the smile widens; he stands up, enthusiastic, fumbling off the headset he’s wearing. “Oh! Carlos, what an... an unexpected honor. Please, come in. Are you... is there... is there something urgent you need to...?”

He’s almost tripping over his own feet as well as over his sentences. And, if the dim light isn’t misleading, _blushing,_ too. At the Town Hall, Carlos had guessed him to be around thirty, maybe even older, but right now he looks younger than Eli and adorably tongue-tied.

It’s going to hurt to stop that look, to make Cecil retreat into professionalism, maybe even summon back the complex sadness that he senses is an integral part of Cecil’s nature — the void to make the bright stars brighter — into those eager brown eyes. It’s going to hurt like hell.

He does it quickly, bracing down against the pain as if giving himself an injection.

“Yes, I’m afraid it is urgent,” in a voice so repressive and toneless that he barely recognizes it as his own. “I’m here to test the building for materials. I won’t take up more than a few minutes of your time.”

Cecil’s smile does falter, but it’s instantly replaced by that uniquely Night Vale look, equal parts curiosity and polite bafflement. He tilts his head at the reader in Carlos’s hand, obviously lost. “Materials? Oh, um, all right. And that thing is what you’re testing with? It certainly looks impressive, with all those wires and tubes on it. What do those blinking lights mean?”

“They mean it’s detecting a field in standby. It’s not fully on yet, you have to flip this switch —”

They both jump slightly as the reader gives out a stuttering whistle, two distinct tones overlapping, and Carlos narrows his eyes at the display. Two centers of energy. One, a writhing dark mass maybe ten yards away, superimposed in a place that seems to overlap or ignore several of the building’s internal walls.

The other, right next to them.

The microphone.

He points the reader at it like a gun. Cecil’s fascinated gaze swings around with it. The feedback gets stronger, a vibration he can feel in the bones of his fingers, and the proximity alert starts beeping.

He’s transfixed for a moment by the absolute clarity of a new discovery: paranormal energy fields have shapes, like bodies of water. This one, a sphere encircled by a ring, reminds him of an open eye. A keen intuition tells him that if the microphone were live, if Cecil were to speak even one word into it, the shape would change, birthing more concentric rings to expand out like ripples in an unseen pond, fading away only outside broadcast range.

He flips the switch again. The humming in his bones ceases. The contrasting silence jars against his eardrums and he almost winces. Wonders if it’s his imagination that he can sense that watching shape, still hanging there over the microphone.

Cecil’s looking at him now, smiling again. “Wow. That was amazing. Really went crazy. Um. Was it _supposed_ to do that?”

Carlos puts the reader into his pocket. His hands are surprisingly steady. “Well, I’ve got the results I need, anyway. I... I’d better go.”

“I can’t persuade you to stay for an interview?”

“No,” curtly, turning on his heel. “I can’t stay, they’re waiting for me.”

“Oh, I see. Well, maybe another time?”

“Maybe.”

“Do you... have any advice for us, on the basis of what you’ve discovered?”

This time Carlos can’t completely suppress the silent, despairing laugh that shakes him. He keeps his back turned, so Cecil won’t see it. Forces calmness into his voice. Over his shoulder, as coldly as he can manage, “Evacuate the building,” and then he walks quickly out of the studio. Doesn’t look back.

 

In the hallway, Carlos pauses to look searchingly at the frosted-glass pane of the door marked _MANAGEMENT_. For a moment, he sees a distorted shadow slip across it, feels a tendril of some viscous thoughtstuff slip across the surface of his mind, and then it’s gone.

He sets his jaw and takes another step. Then a furtive rustling sound startles him, and he turns back.

The corner of some kind of envelope is poking out under the edge of the door. Glancing around to make sure he’s unobserved, Carlos bends down, pulls it out. It’s a piece of paper folded in on itself, sealed with something black, something not quite the right consistency for wax or glue. The seal is shaped like the tattoo on Cecil’s forehead. An oval with a horizontal bar through it.

An eye.

He steps away from the door, breaking the seal, and slides the makeshift envelope apart, careful folds and counterfolds.

Revealed, in a splattered, baroque scrawl, like a deranged child’s attempt at calligraphy, are three words:

_Don’t Come Back._

  

Eli never sends text messages, even in extreme emergencies. He just calls, and hangs up if Carlos doesn’t answer, so Carlos isn’t surprised to see three missed call alerts on the screen of his phone. He taps _return call,_ breathes in the cooling desert air with relief.

“You’ll never guess,” Eli says on the second ring.

“The lab’s on fire. Someone called to tell us about another nonexistent house. There really is an infestation of alien life in the trash bins.”

“Nope, nope, and nope. You will literally never guess, so you’d better just come see. Cutting it close, aren’t you, boss? It’s 10:09. Two more minutes, and you’d have had to let me off the hook for hotwiring your car. As it is, I’ll take my punishment gracefully.”

“God damn it. Where are you?”

“In the parking lot of the Arby’s. I had a stroke of genius. Also, the others are getting impatient. I had to tell them the line was really long and you were holding my place.”

“Your stroke of genius involved breaking into my car and driving it off to the Arby’s parking lot?” Carlos blinks. “You can’t have gotten _that_ drunk in eighteen minutes.”

Eli laughs, his own relief audible in his voice. “As usual, boss, you underestimate my abilities. But sadly, no, I’m sober. This would be way more epic if I were high. You should cut across from Third Street to Sage, it’s faster. Oh, and watch out for some asshole in a fleece jacket walking his dog. Fucking thing’s got breath as green as its eyes. Who wears a fleece jacket in the desert, anyway? Hurry up, or I’ll eat all the mozzarella sticks before you get here.”

“Eli —” Too late. Dial tone.

Carlos quickens his step, peers up at the next street sign, and turns left. Brushes his wrist across his face, ashamed, when he realizes his vision is blurring with tears.

 

He never _would_ have guessed.

About a hundred feet above the red roof of the restaurant, floating in a slow, slow spiraling cloud, there are lights like neon jellyfish or round paper lanterns filled with helium, each one a different color, each one mesmerizingly beautiful. Standing in the parking lot and gaping up at them, he’s bathed in an aurora of softly changing shades.

Eli, walking up with a large paper bag of food in hand, has tact enough to be silent for several minutes. When Carlos looks rather helplessly at him, “Yeah. Me too.”

“Have they been there... this whole time?”

“Guy at the counter says they’ve shown up for the past three days, always about half an hour after the sun sets. They might be invisible in daylight. Who knows?”

“Oh God, this _town,”_ and Carlos covers his face with his hands.

“Yeah. I’m starting to like it here. Just as well, if we’re not leaving.”

“Hold it right there, Hirsch,” before the intern can take more than a step away. “You still haven’t received judgment regarding the matter of my car.”

“Oh, I fixed the wires already.”

“That is not the point.”

“Look, I had a stroke of genius, I told you. I’ve installed the black box inside the car. Now we’ll know for certain if someone’s messing with our privacy. Besides, it fixed the radio. And the clock too, oddly enough. Also, I figured if the radio station is important in the scheme of things —”

“Central, I think,” Carlos says.

“Well, I thought you might want to try recording some of their broadcasts. Now you can hook up a computer or something to the dashboard in there, until we get a better radio.”

“That... might be useful. But next time, ask permission first.”

Hangdog, “I just, it’d been eight minutes already, I didn’t want to think you might be... gone. I had to do something to keep the possibility out of my mind. Why not something useful? After all, how else were we supposed to flee, with the car keys in your pocket?”

“Point taken, but I’m still assigning you all of the least exciting work tomorrow. Including mopping the floor.”

Eli sighs theatrically, but he’s grinning. “I did say I’d take it gracefully. I’m gonna walk back now. You want any of this food?”

“I’m not hungry, thanks.”

“No, I don’t think I would be, either,” Eli says thoughtfully.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing,” hastily. “See you in a little while.”

Carlos decides not to inquire further.

 

There are no other cars left in the parking lot. The lights inside the Arby’s have been turned off. The lights above the Arby’s still glow with an unearthly radiance.

Carlos lies propped against his folded labcoat on the hood of the Chevy. Looks up into the heart of this strange, close constellation, one hand shading his eyes, the other flung out beside him, so that he looks as if he had reached out for something, before the beauty of the lights made him forget what it was.

From inside the car, made audible by rolled-down windows, an advertisement for something to do with the Waterfront Recreation Center has just come to an end, and what he’s been waiting for finally takes its place — the Voice of Night Vale, smooth and deep, fearful and comforting, powerful and serene; Cecil signing off as if all was right with the world.

“Settling in to be another clear night and pretty evening here in Night Vale. I hope all of you out there have someone to sleep through it with, or, at least, good memories of when you did... Good night, listeners. Good night.”

“Good night,” Carlos murmurs back, but although he closes his eyes and remains there for what feels like an eternity, the lights drifting and turning in their otherworldly pavane above him, he only pretends to sleep.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Edited after the episode _Cassette,_ to make the mentions of Cecil's last name properly canon. (Hey, if even the actor didn't always know what the character's last name was, hopefully we Listeners will be forgiven, right?)


End file.
